


Emblems

by babykid528



Category: West Wing
Genre: F/M, Multi, Past Relationship(s), Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-23
Updated: 2010-06-23
Packaged: 2017-10-21 23:56:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/231312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babykid528/pseuds/babykid528
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: <i>Why is it no one ever sent me yet<br/>One perfect limousine, do you suppose?<br/>Ah no, it's always just my luck to get<br/>One perfect rose.</i></p><p>C.J. sits reflecting on the life she's living, the love she has, and the love she lost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Emblems

**Author's Note:**

  * For [raedbard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/raedbard/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I own none of these characters. I'm just playing with them for a moment.

Life after the West Wing is surprisingly good. California is just as C.J. remembers it from those glamorous L.A. days, before Toby came and whisked her away on the craziest ride of her life. Of course, she's older now, and California feels a bit older too, even if the people look like they couldn't age if they wanted to.

She can't have any house she wants this time around, but she can afford the one that's comfortable and close enough to the beach that she doesn't need a pool she might accidentally go for a swim in. And she has her pick of odd jobs and ceremonies to speak at, like she never left the press room, before she begins her real work in Africa, bridging the gap between the third world and the first. So, while it feels like she's just starting her life again after a long hiatus in the land of politics, it's nowhere near as scary as it had been to leave this life for D.C.

Plus, she has Danny with her now, standing beside her, gripping her hand, through the whole of it.

 

C.J. almost can't remember life before Danny.

Almost.

She can remember a time when every man she ever smirked at brought her flowers-- bouquets of roses, red as maraschino cherries. A fleeting promise of love that always withered and died.

She'd loved them at one time, long ago, before their scent turned to gun powder and fear, choking her throat with thick emotion, deafening her with memories of soaring bullets. A symbol of a beautiful man with silver hair, who didn't back down when she challenged him and his job of keeping her alive, who had died in a puddle of his own blood on the floor of a Korean grocery for trying to buy her a candy bar and a single rose.

 

Danny had made the mistake of buying her a single rose once, and only once-- when he picked her up at her finally empty D.C. apartment for their flight out to California. She did her best to keep her smile from faltering and her heart from sinking, but Danny always could read her too easily for his own good.

Now, as she sits out on the back porch of the house she shares with Danny, the place they call home, she admires the multiplying pots of sunflowers he's given her: one every month they've been together in California. A symbol of life and resilience, of constancy and love.

C.J. may never get another perfect rose as long as she lives and she smiles into her cup of coffee at the thought.

She couldn't be happier.


End file.
